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Anna Baik
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Do you have a list of companies you'd love to work for?

I've seen a couple of mentions recently of wish lists of companies you'd love to work for.  I like the idea of putting together a wish list of "dream companies", even if they're not realistic for geo…

Started 11 minutes ago

when we should update our test case suit?

Just listened to a preview for a talk by Lanette Creamer - http://stnx.at/a9qz on reducing test case bloat.

Replied Feb 7

Dont you hate it when developers say "you don't need to know that?"

I hate it when anyone says that to me. But actually, I don't think I've heard it from developers that often, if at all - I'm struggling to remember any occasions. I'm lucky enough that the developers…

Replied Feb 6

 

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Anna Baik added a discussion
I've seen a couple of mentions recently of wish lists of companies you'd love to work for.  I like the idea of putting together a wish list of "dream companies", even if they're not realistic for geographical reasons - it does seem like a good way o…
11 minutes ago
yesterday
Just listened to a preview for a talk by Lanette Creamer - http://stnx.at/a9qz on reducing test case bloat.
on Sunday
I hate it when anyone says that to me. But actually, I don't think I've heard it from developers that often, if at all - I'm struggling to remember any occasions. I'm lucky enough that the developers I've worked with are generally pretty keen to exp…
on Saturday
We produce green ticks in boxes. (ok, somewhat tongue in cheek - but I bet at least a few people reading this have worked on that sort of project.)
February 2
Ok, replying to your points separately: 1) I think different groups use bug reporting tools in a different way. In some, you report everything, instantly, without delay. In others, you note it, investigate it, discuss it, and then report it careful…
January 30
I wouldn't have been able to afford EuroSTAR 2008 if I hadn't won a free place, and if my company hadn't agreed to pay for flight and hotel. My partner was out of work, and we were short of money. As it was international travel, it did take a while…
January 30
Hmm. So I guess you guys (Markus, Joe) have never said to one of your team: "Don't report this one now. It'll take you all morning to redo it with variants, capture all the logs, and write up. And then it'll get rejected instantly because 'there's a…
January 30

Profile Information

About Me:
A few years ago I came into work one morning, expecting another day of application support, and someone took me aside and said: "We had a reshuffle. You're a tester now."

It turned out to be a pretty good move - I really like testing, and it would probably have taken me a lot longer to discover that otherwise. Funny how things turn out sometimes.
Are you...?
available for work, happily employed, just chillin'
Twitter profile
http://twitter.com/TesterAB
Experience in years...
3 - 5
Do you specialise in any particular area of Software Testing?
...

Anna Baik's Blog

Anna Baik

Weekend Testers Europe: EWT01

Wow.

We just wrapped up the first session of EWT01. What a great bunch of testers, that was such good fun. Many thanks to all participants, and of course to Ajay and Markus, my co-conspirators.

Keep an eye on http://weekendtesting.com/ for more info about Weekend Testing! Remember you can sign up for Bangalore/Chennai/Hyderabad sessions too, I also attended WT21 this morning so it's been a Weekend Testing packed day...

I won't say any m… Continue

Posted on January 16, 2010 at 6:40pm — 11 Comments

Anna Baik

Weekend Testers Europe

Hi folks,

You might have noticed various posts and tweets from Markus and myself about Weekend Testing lately. We're now looking to find a small number of keen testers to participate in the early sessions this January, for the new Europe chapter. Contact info below or leave a… Continue

Posted on January 5, 2010 at 3:42pm — 12 Comments

Anna Baik

Practice

There have been quite a few books published in the last few years that identify deliberate practice as an essential component of success. 'Outliers', 'Talent is Overrated', 'The Talent Code', and more. (Anyone got a link for that Mary Poppendieck talk on deliberate practice? That's good too.)


Deliberate practice, however, may not be straightforward to accomplish at work for many of us. (And that's assuming that you're currently working!). Even in economic good times, many companies don't value… Continue

Posted on January 5, 2010 at 1:34pm —

Anna Baik

Thrown in the deep end: Safe learning situations

Markus Gärtner has been writing a series of posts about learning and software craftmanship recently. Well worth checking out.

I'm struck by his repeated use of swimming training as an analogy. It's interesting for me to read this, as my experience of learning to sw… Continue

Posted on December 27, 2009 at 4:30am — 2 Comments

Anna Baik

A response to Markus's post "On Education"

I've been thinking about this post of Markus's recently, and about my own CS degree. It's about two and a half years since I graduated - though it took me about seven years to complete the degree, as I was working full time. My degree was a little different to the standard UK 3-year full-time on-campus BSc - for a start, I think it was the first degree course in the world resulting from a partnership between an employer,… Continue

Posted on December 22, 2009 at 7:30am — 3 Comments

Comment Wall (7 comments)

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At 8:39am on October 2, 2009, Andy Smith said…
Hi Anna. Yep, agreed.

You are absolutely right that one can get invoved in the early stages, and indeed should be involved as early as possible. I look forward with delight to the day when non-testers instinctively think so too! :-)

All the best...
Andy
At 9:44am on September 23, 2009, Andy Smith said…
Hi Anna

Re the entrepreneur mindset/testers take out the garbage/figgy pudding thread:

Firstly, forums always frustrate me because its difficult to articulate an argument sometimes when you have limited wordspace. Sorry to confuse you, I guess it's the nature of medium!? :-)

As suggested, let's come away from that thread because the points we stumble on are not relevant to how to "influence entrepreneurs", which was its supposed purpose.
(However, I must say that I was quite surprised at how little response there was about that very question, because without entrepreneurs none of us would ever have been in a job...let alone a testing one!)

To address the confusion I caused, all I am asserting is that testers should not go into any start-up/embryonic organisation believing that they have a natural right to equal billing with the inventors of that company's products.
Yes I'm a tester, I'm a passionate tester, and I've often had to further the cause of testing in previously-sceptical organisations. I, like you, don't believe testers should be naturally put-upon nor expected to do menial tasks to justify their pay.

But the reality is that one of the reasons why testers often arrive later to the team than others is simply the obvious evolution of any project.
Either an inventor has a brainwave or a business-type-person identifies a commercial requirement for something. That something is then designed in their head, scribbled on paper, hmm-and-ahhed over as a business possibility, roughly costed-out...and the need for quality assurance and testing is still far away.
At some point a plan appears and an expected result can be defined. From here on in the tester can really take a major role, scoping requirements etc and doing their stuff.
In a mature corporation, one can sometimes afford to bring testers in at day-one and give them some authority to set ground rules. In a start-up especially, they will be expected to justify their value much more and that, commercially-speaking, is not a bad thing.

Are you with me so far...?

So, in summary, all I was trying to say previously was that testers need to be very very aware of the business realities when working in start-up situations. It may be unpalatable to have to muck in but, as you say, so long as everyone else does then that's probably OK.
Yet the likelihood is that the other guys in the team will be busy on their respective proper-job stuff sooner than the tester is, simply by the natural way of things. If the tester can accept that fact and pick-up possibly a disproportionate amount of the non-proper-job stuff for that crucial early phase, then soon enough their testing will begin to fill their day and their "influence" will be felt across the team.

I hope that makes some sense. If not, well let's park this for now because I suspect repeating myself over again is not going to make it any clearer! :-)

Cheers
Andy
At 12:08am on January 14, 2009, Jun Bueno said…
Hi Anna,

I'm new to Selenium and was a Ruby/Watir tester in the past. I recently installed Selenium RC and has recorded a simple html script using IDE. I wanted better control in the html code but I don't know how. For example, I wanted to enter a "rand()*100" number in a certain field. Do you know how to do that in HTML?

I tried generating a ruby counterpart of the html and tweaked it but I can't seem to make a ruby code run in RC (TestSuite.html). Do you know how I can call a ruby code from the TestSuite.html?
At 8:30am on December 10, 2008, phil kirkham said…
Great idea to start the test book reviews group. I'll be reviewing books anyway as part of a work task so no real problem for me to add a review onto here as well
Now which one to start with....
At 10:59pm on November 14, 2008, Rosie Sherry said…
Thanks for the blog posts on Eurostar. It's really nice to have quick updates and opinions of what goes on there.

Thumbs up from Rosie :)
At 11:26am on September 8, 2008, sreelaxmi said…
Hi Anna,

I am very much inteersetd in using Selenium for testing my Web application. But i have some doubts on Selenium Core and RC..?
Could u plz help me in clarifying the same...
At 6:55pm on January 17, 2008, Pradeep L said…
Hi Anna,
I am test analyst by profession from India and currently located in London...
Just out of curiosity wanted know what kind of testing activities u guys perform in ur project....
Regards
Pradeep
 
 

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